Ledger licked the sticky caramel off his fingers and dropped the tray into an overflowing trash can as they passed.
“Are you going to ask why we’re here?”
“Probably best if I don’t know,” Wren said. He reached up to pick at the blood scabbed in his eyebrow, looked at the blood, and then flicked it away. “All things considered.”
It was probably a good point. Or it would have been if Ledger hadanysolid plan or idea to act on. Right now, the only information Wren could cozen out of Ledger would be a shrug.
The bits were there. Not all of them—it was ripped-up bits of Post-it notes and half-drawn maps in his head—but enough to give him an outline of what was going on. All he had to do was put them together in a way that made sense.
It felt possible. His brain might just be bright-siding his life from pity, though.
Worry about that later, he told himself. It was getting in short supply—later—but he could carve out twenty minutes, at least.
Wren nudged him in the ribs. “If this is a date,” he said, “you need to buy me something to eat.”
“What, like the fried milk?”
“That’s just coffee, without the coffee,” Wren said. “It’s not a meal. And you might have bought it, but I don’t remember you offering me any.”
“That didn’t stop you from eating it.”
“No,” Wren agreed. He stepped away from Ledger. The brief chill as space opened up between then was quickly banished when Wren grabbed Ledger’s wrist to drag him along. “Come on. I smell fried chicken.”
Ledger resisted as the weight of… everything… anchored him in place. Except there was nothing he could do until Hark found him, and there was—he searched the crowd again to be certain—no sign of his sometime competitor to be seen.
If he was going to die, Ledger supposed, he might as well take advantage of the chance to live a little.
Ledger relaxed and let himself be dragged.
They ducked between two rides, all painted plywood and tangled knots of multicolored cables that snaked in and out between the machinery, and ended up behind the row of tents. Ledger stepped over the thick wire-taut ropes that tethered the colorful canvas to the ground. The chainlink run of the fairground fence, unadorned except for the Do Not Trespass signs and an occasional sock, cut through the gaudy, giddy vibe of the carnival.
On the other side of the fence, in the lot, dented Airstreams were parked next to well-used, well-polished wooden caravans. A handful of horses were tethered on a small green patch, guarded by a handful of prick-eared terriers and big, hairy blond dogs.
“I think maybe you’re smelling someone’s dinner,” Ledger said as he nodded to the moveable suburb through the fence. He tugged him back toward the tents. “There’s plenty of other deep-fried food. I’ll get you a corn dog. No need for cannibalism, Bird.”
Wren snorted and let himself be pulled backward. On the other side of the grubby chain link fence, a girl burst out of one of the trailers. She scrambled down the stairs, a slice of pizza in one hand and a headdress trailing a swan’s worth of feathers in the other, and jogged toward the fairground.
They paused to watch her go.
Wren turned toward Ledger with a wicked, crooked grin. “How about pizza?”
“No.”
Ledger tugged him backward.
“She left the door open,” Wren protested as he waved his hand at the door.
Despite himself, Ledger laughed and shook his head. “Then it wouldn’t be a date, would it?” he asked.
“Yeah, “Wren said with a good-humored snort. “And not like we’ll have a chance for a do-over.”
So much for that. Ledger flinched as the reminder burst the tenuous bubble of “later” he’d put together.
“No,” he said. “Probably not.”
Wren grimaced bitterly. The battered lines of his face—although already less raw and livid—exaggerated the expression.
“Fuck. Look, I didn’t mean…” He stopped mid-excuse and rolled his eyes instead. “You win. Corn dogs it is, but you aren’t going to milk your upcoming horrific death forever, you know.”
